To understand desire be Angerona
in Rome, one finger over your mouth.
Her statue was found in a shrine
for the Goddess of Pleasure. By the way,
there’s a wing in my freezer. It’s April
and I’m in Ohio taking photos of snowdrops.
Snowdrops are early spring flowers,
small balloons of white hanging from leaves.
In my dream, I was Voluptas.
Good morning pleasure,
or—good morning, Pleasure. Angerona
lifted her finger from her lips
and told me a secret. I promised
to keep it, but I’ll share this:
when desire and pleasure meet,
stars connect like the street lights I pass
when I drive to assist in the after-death migration
of birds: grass to freezer to natural history museum.
I forgot to tell you it’s a blue-winged teal
wing pinned to cardboard,
and it’s next to a flicker and finch
found dead in the grass by the road.
A hunter friend killed the teal in season, ate it,
then gave me the wing. I’m vegan,
but he knew I had a freezer of berries
and dead birds. The birds are for science.
The berries are for me. I don’t feed the dead,
but last night I spoke with them.
Photo Credit: “Wounded Amazon of the Sosikles from the Louvre Museum” by Jastrow is licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.
